OCR G321: Foundation Portfolio in Media

Print Brief

  • 50% of AS Qualification
  • Presentation of Research and Planning: 20 marks
  • Construction: 60 marks
  • Evaluation: 20 marks
Tasks

1. Set up a Blog

This is important, not just in terms of assessment but being able to document in real time your creative journey and incorporating a wider variety of media into the presentation of your work.

Both Blogger and WordPress have excellent support, online tutorials and huge communities to help. For Blogger you will need a Google account. See this student example http://yothikayyy-cw.weebly.com/preliminary.html.

Create clear sections on your Blog with the following headings and sub-headings:

  • Preliminary Task – Research and Planning, Construction and Evaluation
  • Main Task – Research and Planning, Construction and Evaluation

Preliminary Exercise

2. Annotating School/College Magazines: (student example below)


Include 4 x annotated existing school/college magazine covers and contents pages in your Planning and Research Portfolio on your Blog as an example of secondary research – ensure you use appropriate media language.
  • It is good practice for the group to locate school/college magazines from a range of different sources e.g. different editions of own school/college magazine and other local schools should not be too difficult to find before online secondary research.

3. Develop a Title/Sketched Plan for your own School/College Magazine: (see student example below)


  • Draft 3 alternative titles for a new school/college magazine.
  • Detail 3 options for the main image on the front cover.
  • Write the text for 4 cover lines/articles you may be including on the front cover.
  • Draft a rough, hand drawn or sketched flat plan of the cover and contents page.
  • Scan in and upload this initial planning onto your Blog.

4. Design a 10 question Qualitative and Quantitative Questionnaire: (student questionnaire below)

  • Identify and record (with justification in your Blog) the target audience of School/College Magazines (pupils/students, parents and guardians, local employers and businesses).
  • Ensure the questionnaire has a visually interesting design and does not use a pre existing template.
  • Include open and closed questions
  • Submit electronically your early sketches and ideas (link your Blog to Facebook etc.), plus your Questionnaire - send to a sample 10 of your target audience as evidence of primary research.
  • Collate the responses on your Blog.
  • Analyse the results graphically using a graph on Excel for quantitative responses and as a summary paragraph for qualitative results (350 words).
  • Include one blank Questionnaire in your Blog.

5. Organise a Photo Shoot for your new School/College Magazine

  • Organise a photo shoot and undertake original photography of students in different locations in and around your school/college – digital stills cameras must be used.
  • 10-15 photographs will be sufficient and again the images need to be uploaded and included in your Blog research and planning portfolio.
  • Make time for a ‘show and tell’ session with recorded feedback from your peers and students on the photo shoot: choose the images you will be using from this feedback.
  • The final picture for the cover must be a student, framed centrally in medium close up while you may use other smaller images for the cover and contents page.
  • Again, upload ALL the images and feedback in your Blog.
6. Design the Front Cover for your new School/College Magazine:

  • Develop further your front Cover flat plan and flat plan of your Contents Page.
  • Using appropriate software design a front page for a new School/College Magazine.
  • Design an appropriate masthead – experiment with using different fonts and those from websites like www.dafont.com.
  • Add cover lines, additional images and background appropriate to the images and layout.
  • Include the school/college’s mantra (their ethos in a sentence – e.g. “Enjoy, Enrich and Achieve"). Think about mode of address – how do you want to ‘speak’ to your target audience?
  • Ensure you also include the month/season of publication e.g. November or ‘Autumn’) and also convergent links to Twitter and Facebook, and the website.

7. Design the Contents Page for your new School/College Magazine: (student examples below)

  • With the Contents Page remember there must be house style evident from the front cover – this can be achieved by using a similar colour palette, font, language code or choice of image.
  • Remember the conventions of a Contents Page differ from a Front Cover e.g. more text on a Contents Page with an approximately 50:50 ratio with the images.
  • Contents Pages have more inset images (between 3 and 5), sub-headings with listed contents (not too listy, think about design) with page numbers, variation in typography and graphics.
  • Your Front Cover may often be the selling point of a magazine but spend as much time on the design of the Contents Page.
  • FOR EACH SIGNIFICANT STAGE OF THE COVER and CONTENTS CONSTRUCTION SAVE A DRAFT e.g. Draft 1 = layout, background colour and first attempt at designing the Masthead, draft 2 = layout, different background, Masthead 2, font from dafont.com and central image. Include roughly between 7-10 drafts.
  • SAVE ALL DRAFTS AND FINAL PIECES AS JPEGS – UPLOAD TO YOUR BLOG.

8. Evaluate your Construction using 6 Key Questions

  • Project in the classroom your School/College Magazine Front Cover and Contents Page for feedback with key questions as prompts – film the class feedback and upload to your Blog.
  • Link your Blog to Facebook and Twitter and send links of your School/College Magazine Front Cover, requesting feedback from the same 10 people who responded to your Questionnaire including the 6 key questions below.
  • Record the feedback on your Blog and use Prezi/powerpoint applications to document this and include your own feedback using again the 6 key questions below but feel comfortable making observations outside the parameters of the questions.
  • Support your analysis of each key question with your own individual short Vlog summarising responses.
  1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
  2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
  3. What kind of media institution (publisher) might distribute your media product and why?
  4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
  5. How did you attract/address your audience?
  6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?